Location Of My Va File Question

[ARTY_CWO]

Hello all, I just got my initial claim for disability a couple weeks ago. I retired from Washington state and moved to Oklahoma. My ebenefits has always said under the jurisdiction of San Diego CA. I went ahead and turned in paperwork for additional dcontentions to San Diego then I get this letter from the Muskogee va here in ok that they received my claim. Ebenefits says Muskogee also. Is this normal for my packet to move around like this? If so, I sure hope things are faster at this branch !! Take care all.

[jvretiredvet]

Well, I guess it's normal under the Benefits Delivery at Discharge (BDD) (or whatever it's called now) program.

If your initial claim was handled by a BDD site, any additional development, Rating Decision, and award promulgation are done by the BDD site.

Then, at some point, you moved to Oklahoma and submitted another claim to the San Diego RO for additional disabilities.

San DIego then transferred your claim to the RO that has the responsibility for OK.

FWIW, if you had stayed in WA state and submitted the same claim, San Diego would have transferred the claim to the Seattle RO.

So, unless you move again, the responsibility for your claim will be with Muskogee. It's likely that all future Rating Decisions will be done by Muskogee as well, unless your fully developed claim is "brokered" to another site for the decision itself.

Hello all, I just got my initial claim for disability a couple weeks ago. I retired from Washington state and moved to Oklahoma. My ebenefits has always said under the jurisdiction of San Diego CA. I went ahead and turned in paperwork for additional dcontentions to San Diego then I get this letter from the Muskogee va here in ok that they received my claim. Ebenefits says Muskogee also. Is this normal for my packet to move around like this? If so, I sure hope things are faster at this branch !! Take care all.

[broncovet]

Is it "normal" for the VA to ship claims around? Well, yes. The VA "farms out" claims regularly, at their discretion. Mine has been farmed out to 2 different regional offices, so it has been in 3 RO's and I have stayed in the same area since I applied.

Those are the RO's THAT I KNOW ABOUT. I was notified about one, but not notified about the other change but found out about it later, after I requested a copy of my c file.

Moving a VEts claim from one RO to another (the Vet cant do this, only the VA can, unless the VET moves) should result in "speeding up" the claim, in theory at least.

In other words if RO "A" has a 13 month wait, and RO "B" has a 4 month backlog, then it may well make sense to move it to RO "B".

However, it has been my experience that "farming out" my claim to another RO ultimately resulted in more delays.

If you reported your "new" address in Oaklahoma to the VA, then it is likely good your claim has moved, especially if it was not moving at your previous RO.

[ARTY_CWO]

Makes a lot of sense, thanks for the information.

[john999]

I think that when certain time limits or load limits are met they will ship your claim anywhere just to show they are doing something. Claims get shipped to the St. Pete VARO and they are already ten feet under water with claims.